When I used to keep bees, I had a buddy with about a hundred hives that I would go out with sometimes to help out. He worked all day long without gloves and rarely got stung...I got stung all the time even with gloves on. It's about how you move and I never mastered it.

After a while stings don't bother you much though. Except on the face or head, that always sucks.

>> ^robbersdog49:

A swarm of bees occurs when they move from an old hive to a new hive. They will settle like this while scouts go looking for a suitable hive location. When they're like this they have nothing to defend. They have no honey and no lavae to look after, so they have no reason to attack anything unnecessarily. So, if you're slow and calm and don't give them a reason to hurt you, they won't. This guy is providing them with what they want - a new hive - and just encouraging them. Once he gets the queen in there the rest will follow. The sugar water just makes them a bit happier and therefore less likely to attack.
When bees sting, they leave the sting behind and this kills them. It's a real last resort. I do a lot of insect photography and it doesn't bother me at all to pick up a bee. Wasps need a little more respect as it doesn't injure them to sting, so they can be a little more trigger happy.


I read that the sting when applied to the enemy acts as marker for other bees, thus it is very likely that he wasn't stung once while moving this hive. This is absolutely amazing. Nice comment robbersdog!

A swarm of bees occurs when they move from an old hive to a new hive. They will settle like this while scouts go looking for a suitable hive location. When they're like this they have nothing to defend. They have no honey and no lavae to look after, so they have no reason to attack anything unnecessarily. So, if you're slow and calm and don't give them a reason to hurt you, they won't. This guy is providing them with what they want - a new hive - and just encouraging them. Once he gets the queen in there the rest will follow. The sugar water just makes them a bit happier and therefore less likely to attack.

When bees sting, they leave the sting behind and this kills them. It's a real last resort. I do a lot of insect photography and it doesn't bother me at all to pick up a bee. Wasps need a little more respect as it doesn't injure them to sting, so they can be a little more trigger happy.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'beehive, found, closet, spittoon' to 'beehive, bees, hive, found, closet, spittoon' - edited by calvados

The Hive cluster is under attack!

I don't want honey from a "spittoon" hive.

"Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/07/167230/colony-collapse-disorder-linked-to-pesticide-high-fructose-corn-syrup

So I guess it wasn't exactly in anyones best interest to have this substance, except for the bottom line. Clear example of greed trumping sanity. We are all in danger when stuff like this is allowed to happen, but we fight the turrrists!

"Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/07/167230/colony-collapse-disorder-linked-to-pesticide-high-fructose-corn-syrup

"Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/07/167230/colony-collapse-disorder-linked-to-pesticide-high-fructose-corn-syrup

So not only did we kill ourselves slowly, but managed to potentially catastrophically disrupt the entire food chain... because HFCS is a cheap thickener.

Fucking hell... watch people continue to remain ignorant.

"Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/04/07/167230/colony-collapse-disorder-linked-to-pesticide-high-fructose-corn-syrup

Always trust the manufacturers; They wouldnt ever do anything to hurt you consumers or your planet. Obey.

My cards on the table: I think Obama is a horrible leader, one of the worst I've ever seen in elected office. I thought he had great vision before, and I liked his early actions in the Middle East, but he seems to lack the balls to do anything decisive. Even if he made strong decisions that I disagreed with I'd respect him more than I do. On that count, Bush was better.

>>> You think Obama failed because he wasn't liberal enough, is that correct? I saw no vision, just a clever media-protected imago who freely admitted he acted as a mirror or canvas for everyone to project their ideas onto him. Middle East failures are no surprise. He's an appeaser, his offered olive branch to the turbaned vermin was predictably shoved up his you-know-where.

What good would the Keystone Pipeline do the US? All it does is remove oil from the States to sell abroad. How could this possibly be a good thing?

>>> It would do more good than fake solar companies. Special thanks to the current idiot Energy Secretary for admitting out loud what the rest of us already knew.

Assuming "scamulous" means "stimulus", then yes, of course it failed. Nothing would have succeeded.

>>> Where were you with this warning before the scamulus began (and yes, Bush conceived it but Obama supercharged it).

And if he hadn't given a stimulus package, the Republicans would have jumped down his throat for doing nothing.

>>> Back to leadership: a real leader can take it. FDR's scamulus was also a failure and revisionist history hides its lack of effectiveness, but at least FDR said of his enemies, "I welcome their hatred."

But per your last comment, "the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame", so you accept then that the entire worldwide financial crisis is Bush's fault anyway. Deal.

It's a tad more complicated than that. Bush Hatred was a daily staple of the libmedia diet and people were naturally disenchanted with negative-only libmedia reporting on the wars. I'm not sure if Bush got the lion's share of the blame for the Follies of '08...he does deserve blame for the initial scamuli, as well as acting like a liberal with a few conservative tendencies.

The seeds of the banking crisis were sowed by government ineptitude and corruption. Few people take huge risks with their own money, so when a socialist government funds a "Free Houses for Poor People Who Can't Afford Them Act" program and promises banks "risk-free" support of loans and investments to do so, people act accordingly.

Europe has European socialism to blame for its follies. Someone's gotta pay for all that free honey, and when there are more freeloaders than worker bees the hive collapses.

May the majority of bewildered voters not be so readily fooled this year, even if it means electing a stiff like Romney. Welcome back stability after His Earness and his planned chaos. And Barney Frank belongs in an orange jumpsuit for his role in the financial crises.












>> ^messenger:

My cards on the table: I think Obama is a horrible leader, one of the worst I've ever seen in elected office. I thought he had great vision before, and I liked his early actions in the Middle East, but he seems to lack the balls to do anything decisive. Even if he made strong decisions that I disagreed with I'd respect him more than I do. On that count, Bush was better.
What good would the Keystone Pipeline do the US? All it does is remove oil from the States to sell abroad. How could this possibly be a good thing?
Assuming "scamulous" means "stimulus", then yes, of course it failed. Nothing would have succeeded. And if he hadn't given a stimulus package, the Republicans would have jumped down his throat for doing nothing. But per your last comment, "the guy in charge at the time the fit hits the shan gets the blame", so you accept then that the entire worldwide financial crisis is Bush's fault anyway. Deal.

When I watch stuff like this now that I am older, I always come up with simple man solutions. Hey donald, why not take a sledge hammer to the hive...

I have to wonder why they didn't call a bee keeper to move them out... at my old house a huge swarm came and settled on the empty house next door. It was a bee keeper who came out and got them (gave us free honey as well... they got a nice new queen and some bees out of it). Of course the bee keeper might not have the tools to pull the house apart to collect the bees and the hive.

Wow. That is spectacular. I hope they just let the house become a hive. We already have a shortage and strange disappearance of bees. As long as they're not Africanized, I see no reason why they can't be allowed to stay and maybe be cultivated.

Now THAT... is a bee-hive.

THAT... is what happens.

THIS... is my hammer.

THAT... is my van.